EPICTETUS SPEAKS
stoic messengers scouts of god
do nothing against your will and you will not suffer harm
anything beyond your power is nothing to you
if you have a favorite cup remember it might be broken
embracing your child you embrace a mortal
death is nothing terrible your life is not your own
leave all these things and never look behind
decline nothing that is offered and do not be bewildered:
let him wish nothing whoever would be free
_______________________________________________________________________
AMY KATHERINE CANNON is a writer and writing teacher living in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from UC Irvine, where she was the recipient of the Gerard Creative Writing Endowment. She is the author of the mini-chapbook ‘to make a desert‘ (Platypus Press, 2016). Her work can be found in BOAAT, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Juked, and LIT, among other places. She is Managing Editor of Palaver Arts Magazine, a student publication.
_________________________________________________________________
Read more by Amy Katherine Cannon:
A poem in BOAAT
A poem in Zócalo Public Square
say it /
briefly //
like /
a finch’s whistle
My sisters, deep in our cells, are still feeding me. /
But I know I will be their last queen.
A different me is silhouetted in the lit windows of every house I drive //
past – me: reading a book, me: making dinner, me: alone staring back.
I am waiting for you. Part of my wall /
will need to go to get you in. It will /
never heal. This is how they’ll find me, /
small, perfunctory, unfit for a king, but /
I’ll hold it all
Women love to dance with him, my mother said. /
He’s so easy to follow. But those women /
never had to clench against his slaps and rages.
God unlike the stories, never casting out /
a child, unloosing the sky
We sit and watch the chickadees in the feeder, /
drinking hot tea, a celebration of security /
with dusk’s familiar arrival.
these clouds, some /
so light I can see the sky’s //
ridiculous boundary
they don’t rise or fall. they’re framed /
on the walls. driftless syllables ornamental /
and motionless.
After I dropped her off, I lit a cigarette and blasted shit that could most generously be described as coffeehouse punk on my way out of the suburbs. I love people, but I’m also a little relieved when they go.
